Curse

Darth Lamblike · Sep 21, 2005, 03:23 AM // 03:23

Don't know if this has been posted before, but I couldn't find it in a search so please bear with me. Has anyone taken a look recently at the fansite skills downloads? The Mesmer skill set has some skills that are clearly not in the game (unless they've been added in the last 2 days) and I was wondering if anyone had heard of them as they actually sound pretty cool. I'm not sure if this is the case for other professions (and I'm too lazy to check right now) but now my curiosity has been piqued. The missing skills are:

Combust Phantasm
Confusion
Disappear
Mantra of Distortion (looks like this might just be Distortion)
Mantra of Hex Reflection
Mantra of Hex Shattering
Mimic
Signet of Illusions

Any thoughts?

Mercury Angel · Sep 21, 2005, 05:52 AM // 05:52

You have to remember that Guild Wars went through a developement phase, and refinement. As with a movie in the making, some 'scenes' (skills) either never saw fruition, or got cut afterwards.

Combust Phantasm <<< Don't believe I've ever seen this one in actual play.
Confusion <<< Don't believe I've ever seen this one in actual play.

Disappear <<< Don't believe I've ever seen this one in action.
This sounds like it became a possibility around the time the ranger class was still being explored, prior to the existance of Expertise, when it was thought stealth would be the ranger's primary attribute. As it were, the idea of a class that uses invisibility skills to sneak up and hit opponents was apparently scrapped, so I guess that explains this skill. The above to be taken with a grain of salt, it's really just to establish the possible context.

Mantra of Distortion (looks like this might just be Distortion)
Yes, this is the original Distortion.

Mantra of Hex Reflection <<< Don't believe I've ever seen this one in actual play.

Mantra of Hex Shattering
This is the current skill Hex Breaker, pretty much.

As long as we're done with the 'mantras', something old to note about them;
Like monk maintained enchantments, they used to require 1 pip of energy regeneration to maintain.

Signet of Illusions <<< Don't believe I've ever seen this one in actual play.
Mimic <<< Don't believe I've ever seen this one in actual play.

Except for the skills that have been renamed or changed, one can only surmise why other skills didn't make the cut.

A number of ranger skills have changed or been removed as well.
Tongue Biter was renamed Concussion Shot, a TON of ranger calls were scrapped prior to the release of the game, and Conflagration + High Winds bit the dust.
From what I hear, High Winds was supposed to make bow attacks less effective.
Strider's Reflexes was a run buff+attack evasion that ran out if your health dropped below 50%

Elementalist Watery Aura became Swirling Aura, and Glyph of Gesture went to Glyph of Concentration. Unsure whether Lightning or Lightning Storm went on to become Lightning Strike, but one of them is gone.

Monk's Holy Veil was very different, entirely forbidding (currently doubles casting time of hexes instead) the enchanted ally from being the target of any future enchantments or hexes so long as you maintained Holy Veil.
Holy Wrath and Retribution didn't have damage caps on returned damage.
Mend Ailment healed multiple conditions at once, but only Poison, Dazed (then called Silenced), Diseased, and Blindness, and healed for each removed condition.
Mend Injury was the same as Mend Ailment, except it did Bleeding, Crippled, and Deep Wound instead.

Necromancer health sacrafices used to be set amounts that scaled with your attribute, rather than health.
Dark Aura used to have no drawbacks, if I recall correctly.
Death Nova hurt all nearby creatures instead of just enemies.
Spinal Shivers interrupted the target, and had a chance to end instead of energy loss.

Almost everything else has remained fundamentally the same. I'm positive I've failed to list all major skill changes (And name changes, which are minor but still important), so if anyone else has anything to add, be my guest.

Darth Lamblike · Sep 21, 2005, 12:43 PM // 12:43

Thanks, Mercury, that explains a lot. As someone who never played the beta version of GW, I don't have the advantage of seeing it evolve from that point forward into today's version. I have also read many threads that talked about the way things were (beta) and some things seem pretty interesting. That being said, it would be nice to see some of these skills in a future expansion along with maybe expanding the skill bar by one or two useable skills. Imagine the possibilities!